Wednesday April 7, 2010 Donna S. Levin

Theme: GOLF (Across 60. This puzzle's theme - according to Twain, it's "a good walk spoiled") . Perhaps, more likely, this puzzle was inspired by this week’s Masters, from Augusta, Georgia, home of the GREEN JACKET, the first of the four Major Championships of Golf.

16A. Extremely defensive state of mind: BUNKER MENTALITY. BUNKER being the name for the sand traps we often find our balls buried in.

30A. Physical play: ROUGH HOUSE especially when we hit our drives in the ROUGH, the thicker grass next to the Fairway.

39A. Abstinent one: TEETOTALER like the members of the WCTU the TEE is both the place where a golf hole begins, and the peg which holds the ball before it is struck.

54A. Sam-I-Am's story: GREEN EGGS AND HAM one of our favorite Dr. Seuss stories, and the GREEN is the place where the hole is located in golf.

Lemonade blogging.

With only four theme words, Ms. Levin managed to pack in lots of spaces with two 15 letter fills, unusual for a Wednesday. Her last puzzle for us being the Keep It Simple Stupid puzzle from March.

Welcome back to Wacky Wednesday, today featuring the stylish offering of Ms. Donna Levin who has endeared herself with her witty puzzles, and her background as an ex-attorney. I hope you all appreciated how we have been preparing you for this puzzle with all the talk of the Masters, and a special shout out to GAH, who has picked PHIL MICKLESON to prevail.

Across:

1. Date with an MD: APPT because the clue has an abbreviation, you know the answer will as well.

5. Horse of a certain color: ROAN

9. One of the March girls : BETH played by Margaret O. Brien, with Elizabeth Taylor as Amy, in the 1949 movie version of LITTLE WOMEN .

13. Runny fromage: BRIE certainly does not make the cheese appealing, but keeps our French education going, FROMAGE = CHEESE.

14. "La __ Mobile": "Rigoletto" aria: DONNA, I really like how she worked her own name into the grid.

15. Declare openly: AVOW

19. Pablo Neruda work : ODE a very important 20th century poet, who has appeared both in puzzles, and CA’s daily rhyming remembrances.

20. Landlocked Asian sea: ARAL becoming a staple of our constructors.

21. Spats spots: : ANKLES , love the alliteration, the clue and the memories of SPATS from old gangster movies.

22. Trial in simulated conditions: TEST RUN

24. Short orders in a luncheonette? : BLTS short being another way to clue an abbreviation.

25. Giant Mel: OTT classic crosswordese.

26. Retired Cunard liner, briefly: QEII which is paired so cleverly with the down 26. Part of 26-Across: QUEEN.

27. '60s protest gp. : SDS Students for a Democratic Society; I fell in love on election day 1968, while the SDS was rallying with “Vote with your feet.”

34. Joint problem: GOUT

35. Pig Latin refusal: IXNAY

36. Precipitous start? : PEE. Letter P starts the word "Precipitous". You have to love a puzzle that has PEE right in the middle, and clued with such an ominous word to hide the simplicity of it being the first letter of the word.

37. Limoges product: CHINA some really beautiful Dishes.

38. Gardener's areas: BEDS are often places for planting things.

41. Caps or Cat preceder: SNO this was in my last blog, so go to March 17, 2010, if you want a picture.

42. Seedless bit of flora: FERN they reproduce by SPORES.

43. Channel where Susan Lucci hawks her jewelry line: HSN which with the death of the Soap Opera will be her only TV home.

44. Funny Fey: TINA or should we say SEXY FEY , notice the handcuffs….

45. Ghoulish: MACABRE

49. __ rod: powerful Old Testament tool: AARON’S a shout out to my oldest son, who is going to GABII as a staff member! .

52. Luminous glow: AURA

53. Objective: AIM

57. Margarine: OLEO

58. Condos, e.g. : UNITS

59. Like Cheerios: OATY okay, as opposed to my humor which is often CORNY?

61. Insignificant: PUNY

62. Prejudice: BIAS

Down:

1. Monk's superior: Hey ABBOT .

2. Bluenose : PRUDE Bluenose has so much feeling to it, wonderful clue.

3. Sappy trees: PINES though we like Maple sap better, anybody want some pine syrup?

4. Drug in Shatner novels: TEK if you missed the whole TekWar phenomenon, it is is very well done.

5. Like I, in some cases: ROMAN a new twist on our old friend the ROMAN NUMERAL, very visual.

6. Turow work about first-year law students: ONE L a term I disliked when I taught at law school, but it will make some happy.

7. Political commentator Coulter: ANN who received so many comments about her unappealing persona.

8. Hollywood's Wood: NATALIE a beautiful girl, who died under strange circumstances.

9. Goofs on the mound: BALKS ah, goodie, a baseball reference also.

10. Activity from below? : EVIL The Devil Made Me Do It .

11. Schlep: TOTE okay, a little French, a little Yiddish…

12. Major rtes. : HWYS

14. Diminutive celeb sexologist: welcome back DR. RUTH who always wanted to keep us busy. Also, 39. Stiffen: TENSE UP Dr. Ruth?

17. Like garden smells: EARTHY

18. Not behind: ANTI when you refuse to get behind a project, i.e. not support, nice fill.

23. Frat party garb: TOGAS

24. Assailed: BESET

27. Dirty: SOIL must be careful here.

28. Beach sight: DUNE who doesn’t like to play in the SAND .

29. Headline (in) STAR in my guest blog.

30. Teases: RIBS a nice old fashioned word

31. Beasts of burden: OXEN and 55. Wildebeest: GNU

32. Word processor command: UNDO sadly life has no such choice.

33. La Scala production: OPERA a recent topic of discussion with OPUS

34. Togo neighbor: GHANA we will teach Geography yet!!

37. Medical imaging proc. : CT SCAN how about some background music 5th Dimension.

40. They held Tara's title: O’HARAS Scarlett et al.

42. Helsinki native: FINN

44. "... newt and __ frog": "Macbeth": TOE OF Eye of Newt

45. Like some basements: MUSTY

46. Religion founded in 19th-century Persia: BAHÁ'I isn’t it fun to learn?

47. Cowboy's rope: RIATA

48. Small-screen awards: EMMYS with all the 60” and more TVs this may not be true anymore.

49. Wide-eyed: AGOG

50. Woody's offspring: ARLO The father and son Guthries, with Alice’s Restaurant the longest song ever to get airplay on the radio; Arlo refused to sing any of it when we asked at Woodstock.

51. Fishing gear: REEL it’s been “REEL” nice blogging “AGIN”

52. Not fer: AGIN against (if you’re not fer me you’re agin me)

56. Driver's lic. info: DOB date of birth

Answer grid.

Picture of the Day: Here are a few Asana (Yoga posture) photos from our regular poster Lucina. Click on each one, it will enlarge. Simple amazing. Lucina is 72-year-old semi-retired teacher living in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Twins great Harmon Killebrew also resides.

This over and out from Lemonade in the sunny south, to Dennis, Robin and all who need, our best thought.

Lemonade

Interview with Paul Stynsberg

We often use crosswordese to describe words words found only in crosswords but seldom used in our daily conversation. Many solvers scorn upon the frequency of their appearances. But those words, with their vowel richness, is essential for constructors to cohere the whole grid. And new solvers simply can't complete a puzzle without mastering these words.

Paul Stynsberg, a fellow Minnesotan, makes the learning easier and entertaining. Every day he emailed subscribers a Word of the Day puzzle. Solve his little corner grid, and click on the answer, you'll find the definition, the common clues in crosswords, crossword puzzle frequency, frequency in English Language and a fascinating article on the word itself. He also provides a great picture to help solvers remember the word.

Paul has kept all the crosswordese he's covered in alphabetical order. You can also search the word archive by date and year. It's simple to sign up and it's free. Just email him at stynsberg@wiktel.com. I've benefited immensely from his daily email.

Also, don't miss his Clever Clue of the Month. Which is your favorite? I love "Camel dropping" for ASH. But truly they are all gems. Last month's "Made Unbearable?" for NEUTERED is simply spectacular.

When and how did you decide to dedicate a website specifically to crosswordese?

I love words, I love learning, and I enjoy solving crossword puzzles. Somewhere along the line I realized crossword puzzles had a language of their own: crosswordese. As I began thinking about doing some kind of site and creating a list of crosswordese, I realized there were many more crosswordese words than I had originally thought. At that point I realized a word-of-the-day site would be a good way to go - my thinking was that it could be one of the most useful word-of-the-day sites for the millions of people that work crossword puzzles each day because, inevitably, the word you see today will be in a puzzle within a few days or weeks. I created the site about 5 years ago.

Through creating the site I've learned hundreds of things I wouldn't have learned otherwise. For example:

ASTA: This is the dog in the Thin Man movies. Through learning about Asta I discovered a great movie series I otherwise might have never watched.

ULEE: The title character in the movie, Ulee's Gold. This is another fine movie I hadn't seen previously.

ENNUI: What a great word to use when 'boredom' just isn't enough!

And then there are the dozens of people I've learned about with crossword friendly names whose fame lives on through crosswords. A few examples: SAKI, AGEE, URIS, ODETS, INGE, NIN, ARP, KLEE, ERNST, ERTE, PEI, NAST.

I could go on and on...

What resources do you use to flesh out the crossword puzzle frequency/English language frequency stats & the appropriate summary on the Word of the Day?

Jimmy Wales is one of my heroes. His Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it's a treasure trove for projects like this. Most of my word-of-the-day summaries use information from Wikipedia articles.

Regarding crossword puzzle frequency - that's based on my own research. I solve puzzles with a number of friends at my work place (on breaks). Together, we solve a wide variety of puzzles (see my links page) - about 120 a month. From this I select a cross-section of puzzles to compile a list of crosswordese and calculate frequencies.

The English language frequency stats are retrieved using the elegant web-site, Wordcount.org This site presents 86,800 of the most frequently used English words and ranks them in order of commonness. The average native English speaker knows 12,000 - 20,000 words. Most crosswordese words are not part of the 40,000 most common words - in fact, many times I'm not able to provide stats because they're not even part of the site's 86,800 words.

I adore your Clever Clue of the Month. Can you explain to us your sifting process? Also, how do you ensure that those clues are original?

Coming up with the Clever Clue of the Month is a labor of love. I look at each of the puzzles our group solves each month searching for clever clues. I also receive a handful of clues each month from friends of the site. I then compare them with Matt Ginsburg's Clue Database. This program is updated every week or two with clues from most of the major crosswords. At least half of the clever clues are eliminated at this point because they've been used before. At the end of the month I send a preliminary list to a dozen veteran solvers and constructors to help me narrow the list down to six. I then put the list of six on the site and open it up to everyone to vote for their favorite.

Most of the time, my favorite clues don't win. For example, my favorite clue for March was: Load assistant? ....... EXLAX. It didn't even make it to the final six.

At this point, we're only looking at about half the puzzles out there each month, so this isn't as fair as it could be. I would welcome clever clue submissions from your readers.

Tell us a bit about your background. Do you construct crossword also?

I haven't begun constructing crossword puzzles yet. I'm quite sure I'll give it a shot in the future. I hope I don't put it off until retirement.

Regarding my background - I took a lot of math in college - I've discovered a lot of solvers and constructors have math backgrounds. I finally ended up with a degree in elementary education and taught 4th and 5th grade for three years. Since then I've worked at a window factory in northern Minnesota where I'm currently doing tech support.

What is a perfect puzzle to you? And what kind of themes/fill appeal to you & what are your groaners?

The first thing that comes to mind when you ask this question is the puzzle I highlighted as a Great Puzzle Alert in January. Xan Vongsathorn created an amazing rebus puzzle for the New York Times. It had an extermination theme where 'ant' was part of the answer. The same clue could be used for the answer if the 'ant' was 'exterminated'.

I'm a sucker for rebus puzzles. I love a theme that'll make me laugh out loud. And, of course, I like puzzles with a lot of clever and interesting clues. Also, I love puzzles that try new things, like the April Fool's NYT puzzle from a couple days ago where the wording of all the clues was out of order

My least favorite puzzles are those which are too easy. However, I've found a way to even enjoy them. There are a number of people I work with who are relatively new to crosswords. I let them start the easy ones. Then it's my job to finish them. They become much more challenging when there are a number of incorrect answers to sift through.

What puzzles do you solve every day? And who are your favorite constructors?

There is no single puzzle that I solve every day. I like to work on a wide variety of puzzles each month. I like to make sure I do at least one of every puzzle on my links list every month. Of course there are some puzzles I enjoy more than others. I lean heavily toward the NYT, WSJ, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Week, and Merl Reagle's Sunday Crosswords.

My favorite constructor/editor is Peter Gordon and my favorite puzzle is his weekly crossword in The Week. It's basically a news junkie's dream, and although I don't consider myself a news junkie, I love the fact that many of the clues are amazingly recent - many from news stories less than a week old! A couple other favorites are Merl Reagle and Brendan Emmitt Quigley.

Besides crossword, what else do you do for fun?

I enjoy spending time with my wife and kids. It looks like we'll be empty nesters in a couple months. I also enjoy walking/running my dog a few miles every day.

I teach a class on the Life of Christ. My work with crosswords pales in importance to this.

Like many other crossword solvers, I enjoy sudoku. I play backgammon almost every day. Other hobbies include badminton, scrabble, tennis, watching the Twins, and having my heart broken by the Vikings every year.